Mobile devices may take the form of mobile telephones, tablet computers, laptop computers, portable computers with wireless communication cards, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital cameras, video gaming devices, portable media players, flash memory devices with wireless communication capabilities, wireless communication devices including so-called “smart” phones and “smart” pads or tablets, e-readers, or other of a wide variety of other types of portable devices. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly powerful with the addition of high-power processors, the capability to process media content, and the ability to interact with networks in the cloud. These improvements make it possible to develop new usage models for the mobile devices that provide a better user experience and improve productivity.
Recently, there has been a move to support wireless communication without the use of a wireless access point. The Wi-Fi Direct standard, currently under development by the Wi-Fi Alliance, is one standard that supports communication between two or more devices without the need for a wireless access point. Wi-Fi Direct may also enable wireless devices to easily connect and communicate with each other over an encrypted wireless communication channel without the need for a complicated setup process. Devices that communicate over Wi-Fi Direct may offer and seek services, such as send service, play service, print service, display service, wireless docking service, and wireless serial bus (WSB) service (i.e., Universal Serial Bus (USB) over wireless service), so that one device may wirelessly use capabilities of another device. The Wi-Fi Alliance has been developing an Application Service Platform (ASP) that implements the common functions needed for devices to advertise, seek out and manage these services.